


The Garden of Heavenly Delights

by Ilthit



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, Othello - Shakespeare
Genre: Afterlife, Christianity, Crossover, Death, Gen, Heaven, Hell, Revenge, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 02:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19714189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Desdemona had expected to burn, but the breeze from the open windows was cool and fresh.





	The Garden of Heavenly Delights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bardsley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsley/gifts).



“’Tis a great crowd!”

“’Tis never otherwise.” 

Desdemona had spoken to no-one in particular, but the young lady leaning on the open doorway had replied. No wonder she drooped, thought Desdemona; her velvet dress was dripping vet, and must be weighing her down. The lady beckoned her in with a dreamy smile. “Come in, madam stranger. Join our feast.”

Desdemona stepped cautiously across the threshold, her bare feet tender on the stone, which was unexpected—the dead should not feel, should they? She lifted her eyes and looked around for a single silk-clad calf, for wide shoulders, for a beard. Finding none, she breathed out and stood straighter. 

Sunlight spilled in through vaulted windows. Vines crept in through their arches, but this house was neither cold nor abandoned. All along the great tables and lounging on the sofas were women, and on every surface there were bowls of silver filled with fruits and treats and pitchers of wine ready to pour.

“What is this place?” she asked the moist creature who had beckoned her in. Her voice was scratchy and talking made her cough, but she spoke nonetheless. “It is not Venice.”

“I believe it is Purgatory. It is not so terrible here. You will quickly grow used to it.” 

The stitching and the material of the lady’s soggy gown left it in no doubt that she was high-born. Desdemona’s own night-slip could not distinguish her in the same way. She was pale, this lady, with dun loose locks flowing down her shoulders, and her face was puffy, though her eyes were bright. Desdemona’s fingers skimmed to her own countenance. Was she as pale? Or was she red, her eyes veined? She could not grow ugly before she was a mother… But there were no men here, and she would never be a mother now. She let her hands drop. “Have you been here long, then, my lady?” 

“Only a year. Or has it been two, or three?” The lady rolled her head, but did not seem overly concerned. “There is no winter here. I cannot be sure.” She smiled and picked a flower caught in her locks. It dripped fragrant water down Desdemona’s neck as she placed it behind her ear. “I am Ophelia.”

“Desdemona.”

“Evenings do come. We eat and drink our fill here during the day. Then at night...”

Desdemona’s heart sank. “The men come.”

“No.” Ophelia shook her head. “They never come _here_. At night we make our choice.” 

“Choice?” 

“All shall come to light in due time.” Ophelia laughed as if she had made a jest, yet Desdemona could not grasp the wit of it. “Come.” She took her by the hand and led her to a table laden with grapes and buns, with sweet drinks and fresh, hot sausages, and Desdemona realized she was terribly hungry. She took a sausage gingerly between forefinger and thumb and nibbled it. It went down her battered throat without a complaint, and so she ate the whole thing, and then another after it.

They chatted and laughed as the shadows grew longer. Everyone here had a story. “I was too long at the market,” said one woman in a laundress’s apron, its rough weave torn and splattered in blood. The women at the table laughed, and so did the laundress. “It was always summat with that lad of mine. I had made the dinner too bland, or too spicy, or was talking too much, or I were not wet enough for his cock...” That last one made Desdemona gasp and cough, but Ophelia just tittered. 

"I became with child too easily," said a woman of two-score or so years. 

"I did not become so often enough," said another. 

"No reason," scoffed a third. "He was a blighted, benighted scoundrel."

"Mine drove me insane," said Ophelia, which made Desdemona turn to her. She did not seem insane now any more than any of them did, these wraiths she now counted herself among. There were dreams in Ophelia’s eyes, in the tilt of her smile, but that was all. She shrugged. "So they say. I walked into the water.” 

"I suffocated, as well,” Desdemona confessed. “Was stifled. My husband believed me untrue."

"I _was_ untrue," said a redheaded lass of eighteen, prompting another round of laughter. 

"At least you had your pleasure before he sent you up here." The laundress clinked her drink against the girl's, who smiled in return, showing a mouth missing teeth.

The stories grew longer and meandered from ghastly ends to the delights of life left behind, and to delights available here in Purgatory. Desdemona had expected to burn, but the breeze from the open windows was cool and fresh. At dusk, Ophelia drew Desdemona out to the gardens outside their hall. A pale moon hung low on the horizon. Hills flowed from here in every direction, like the green waves of an ocean. The air smelled of cut grass and flowers. 

"The choosing will start soon," Ophelia remarked. 

"What are we choosing?"

"Punishments."

There was a glow up above them, then a blinding light, as if a portion of the sun had shot down from beyond the veil of night. Desdemona's throat let out a gurgled scream. Ophelia laughed. "Be not afraid! That is the angel. I wanted you to see him descend. Come!"

The two raced together into the hall as the light outside dimmed and the gentle lamplight inside was replaced with a blaze like a midsummer's sun. Some of the women stood on tables and cheered. Others lay about in various states of drunkenness or lassitude. It had been a long feast. 

CATHERINE SIMPSON OF NEWCASTLE, said the angel in a voice of thunder. Ophelia had called the angel a he, but this did not seem to Desdemona to be a person at all. She covered her eyes in terror.

STEP FORWARD. 

Desdemona peeked through her fingers as the redheaded girl stood up on a bench. Up above, the ceiling vanished in a blink. In its place opened a deep pit. All above was inverted, hanging upside down, stuck to the top of the cavern as feet stick to the earth. There was liquid fire in the bottom of it, flowing slow and ponderous across the bones of giants. From the pit ascended--descended--the figure of a man of forty or fifty years, bound in chains, weeping and struggling. 

HOW SHALL WE PUNISH HIM TODAY? asked the angel, and the girl's face lit up in a grin. "Drill a hole in the back of his head and pull his teeth out through it one by one," she decreed. It sounded to Desdemona as contrived as it did cruel. "Cover him in putrid rash and give him claws like a cat, so he will tear himself apart to stop the itching. Let him see himself in a fine mirror, a true reflection of his carcass." 

The angel wrote her suggestions down on a piece of parchment with a golden quill and the man plummeted screaming back into the fire. Catherine stepped down. 

OPHELIA, DAUGHTER OF POLONIUS. STEP FORWARD.

Ophelia waved at the pale young man who was brought, shivering and defeated, down to his judgment, and then shrugged. "Read him some inferior poetry."

So it went. Some offered forgiveness and allowed their killers to be released back into Hell with no new punishments meted out. Some became inventive; others obscene. The horror of it began to wane, and as the night wore on Desdemona began to tire of the proceedings. It was an ugly thing that they did here. The garden with its quiet beauties called to her. 

"Do you know," said Desdemona to her new constant companion. "I do not think we are in Purgatory at all." 

"Aye?" Ophelia popped a grape in her mouth and chewed it with relish. "Where, then?"

"I think this must be Heaven." 

She looked up into Hell. Hell looked up at her, and it was afraid. 

DESDEMONA OF VENICE. 

Desdemona stood.


End file.
